Fragment by Warren Fahy Page B

replied. “When insects invaded the land, they devoured plant life. But plants adapted to the invasion. They turned insects into agents of their own reproduction by offering nectar in flowers and seeds in fruit. Examples abound of predator/prey relationships becoming symbiotic relationships,even reproductive relationships. Every one of us is a colony of cooperative organisms, millions of which inhabit our intestinal tract, graze on our epidermises, and devour bacteria scraped by our eyelids off our eyeballs between the columns of our eyelashes. All of these creatures had to have begun as predators but then adapted in cooperation with our bodies so as not to destroy their own homes, and in fact to help their hosts survive and flourish. Without the vast horde of creatures that inhabit us, we would
die.
We could not have evolved without them, nor they without us. Instead of a perpetual war, I believe this treaty of cooperation is the true theme of life, the very essence of a viable ecosystem. Instead of the stalemate of a war, which many believe the natural world reflects, perhaps evolution is always working toward stability, peace treaties, the mutual benefit of alliances. And its central building block is the treaty between the first single-celled predator and its prey:
sex.
That peace treaty had to be struck before the relentless violence of predator and prey inevitably selected both for extinction, which probably happened many times.”
    “The development of sex in eukaryotic cells is still a mystery,” grunted another grizzled scientist. He shook his white-haired head emphatically.
    “Maybe the answer to the mystery has been too obvious for us to see, Dr. Kuroshima,” Geoffrey replied. “Maybe the explanation has been right under our noses all along, or, at least, under our kilts. Perhaps we’ve just been too shy to look?”
    A wave of grumbles, hoots, and whistles greeted this flourish, and the eighty-year-old Japanese scientist scoffed benignly, holding a hearing aid to his head with one hand and waving the other at Geoffrey, for whom he had great affection, despite and probably because of the younger man’s tendency to stir things up.
    One pretty student intern in the audience raised her hand.
    “Yes?”
    “Dr. Binswanger, can I ask a question on a different topic?”
    “Of course. There are no rules except that there are no rules at Fire-Breathing Chats.”
    The audience seconded this with some enthusiastic applause.
    “Your expertise lies in the geo-evolutionary study of island ecosystems,” the young woman recited. She’d clearly memorized her program of summer speakers. “Did I get that right?” She laughed nervously, inspiring some sympathetic laughter in the feisty crowd.
    “Well, I’ve touched on pattern analysis in nature, and in biological communication systems in particular,” Geoffrey agreed, “but genetic drift and island formation is my current project here at Woods Hole, where I’m overseeing a study of insular endemic life on Madagascar and the Seychelles in a geo-evolutionary context. So, I guess you could
say yes
!”
    There was a scattering of academic chuckles, and Angel Echevarria rolled his eyes; the girl was quite good-looking and Geoffrey had totally blown it, again.
    “So… Did you see
SeaLife?”
she asked.
    This released a unanimous eruption of laughter.
    “By the way, you’ve got great legs,” she added.
    Geoffrey nodded at the ensuing howls and gave a Rockette kick.
    Geoffrey thought about Angel’s video of the reality show. The blue blood had continued to bother him. The blurred images of the plants looked strange but not ridiculous—in fact, rather more subtle than he imagined a TV show could manage. But it wasn’t enough for him.
    He shook his head, stalemated. “Given what is known about isolation events and the duration of micro-ecologies—and given what they can do in Hollywood movies these days—I’m going to have to assume that island’s a hoax, like